Monkeying around in the kitchen

Both of our girls love to help in the kitchen. It doesn't matter what's on the menu, they love to help prepare snacks, meals and special things like cookies, cake and monkey bread. We tried a new recipe on Christmas morning courtesy of Cook's Illustrated magazine and an episode of Cook's Country on TV.  It was such a big hit on Christmas that Lilly requested an encore. So, yesterday we set out to make homemade monkey bread, again.

We started with made from scratch dough, and we let it rise until doubled in size...

Then, we created an assembly line to cut the dough and prepare it for the oven. Here are the girls preparing to butter and sugar the dough...

Claire is showing off her brown sugar hands and our dough.

After another hour of rising, then 30 minutes baking in the oven and a little bit of glaze, here's the end result...

... a sugary, gooey, homemade, high calorie treat for New Year's morning breakfast. 

YUM!
Happy 2011, everyone!